Pandemic Paranoia on Planet Earth

Climate Change
C/o Mother Nature
Planet Earth

Subject: Pandemic Paranoia on Planet Earth

Dear Climate Change,

I am greedy, I am weak and I am extremely myopic. Yet, even I can see your power and influence growing unwaveringly every passing day and manifesting itself in the form of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, displacement and even endangerment of species.

For thousands of years, we humans believed that we were supreme and made the earth tremble beneath our feet. But now, do we succumb in front of your ruthless power? Is there anything not under your supremacy? Is there anything you are willing to spare?

Wait! I know… diseases! You can’t influence their spread… can you? Oh no… you can?

Turns out you are even more powerful than I thought. Till a few years ago, the worst catastrophe that plagued my mind was the remote possibility of a nuclear war leading to annihilation of my race. Today, in the times of Covid-19, you have even beaten that. It seems that you, Mr. Climate Change can even cause epidemics and proliferate diseases.

Firstly, we have ice. More specifically, permafrost. Well, what about it? Permafrost is ground that remains frozen for two or more consecutive years. It stores the carbon-based remains of plants and animals that froze before they had the chance to decompose. But, what if an animal that contained pathogenous bacteria or viruses was buried in the permafrost without having decomposed? What would happen then?

Well, due to your rapidly hastening impact, permafrost loses its tenacity and begins to thaw. Due to the melting of the permafrost, all those animal and plant carcasses can be released from within it. Now, if, hypothetically, these carcasses do contain bacteria or viruses, they would stir from their dormant state, get warm and would still have the ability to cause diseases in organisms.

Come to think of it, this is exactly what happened in Siberia! An outbreak of anthrax that killed more than 2,000 reindeer and sickened 13 people in 2016, was linked to 75-year-old anthrax spores in reindeer carcasses, that had been released by melting permafrost. Did we get off relatively easily there? Is there a greater threat looming under rapidly melting ice somewhere?

Ok, that was one rather disconcerting way in which you are taking over the world, in your rather ill-tempered way. Is there another?

Well, for seconds, your pals, the bloodsucking little demons…the mosquitos come to assist you it seems.

The World Health Organization reports that more than seven hundred thousand people around the world die from vector-borne diseases each year and that there were over four hundred thousand global malaria deaths in 2018 alone. Not all mosquitoes carry the makings of Chikungunya, West Nile virus, Zika virus, and Yellow Fever that contribute to that yearly bounty, but many do.

Mosquitos thrive in the environmental conditions present due to climate change. Give your friends warmer temperatures, excess C02 and more stagnant water, and they will have a blast. They will breed excessively, and their population will skyrocket. As vectors, there pathogen bearing capacity will increase and therefore, they will be able to transmit more pathogens from the source of the infection to the healthy person.

Oh, Climate Change! How unyieldingly you dominate our world, how easily you claim lives of organisms big and small. I know that it is ultimately all our fault for tainting Mother Nature and now we are having to pay the price for it. Can we undo this?  Will you ever forgive us?

Yours truly,
Tarini Malhotra
9-D
The Shri Ram School, Moulsari